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Pulling the trigger
Daring Do took one final step, then flopped on to the large bedrock she’d been walking along for a while. Hoicking herself up over that ledge had burnt out all the strength left in her. Panting, she shook her heavy saddlebag down, and rummaged inside for the water flask. She took several gulps from it, before looking back over the crag’s brink at the valley far below. Patches of tilled land, interspersed with large splotches of green, were covered in mist; here and there, tiny plumes of smoke rose into the quiet sunset. In the distance, across the vast expanse, she could make out the low smudge of Canterlot’s range. Maybe that minute spangle poised atop the ridge was the capital city itself, she couldn’t tell.
She sat there for a long time, engrossed in the contemplation of the scenery, until the shrill cry of a kestrel roused her from her reverie. Sighing, she stood up, picked up her gear and resumed her ascent. Just another half mile of gentle slope to reach the border of the tableland she’d set out to explore a fortnight ago.
As she stomped forward, the limestone wall on her left sank, until it was no more than a humble hedge barely high enough to blot out sight.
One step ahead.
Another one.
The hedge fell away completely. She raised her head.
Daring Do’s heart skipped a beat and her eyes widened.
Day 7
Well okay. I admit keeping a diary is somewhat childish but as the radio operator I get a lot of free time and I just don’t want to potter around or mess up with the others. I’ve always been attracted to literature so why not? That’s a good way to give it a go. I’ll keep that private though, the boss’s log will take care of all official reports.
The machines are still humming and digging, building our future homes, the labs and all the stuff that will be needed for this five year stay. In the meanwhile, we’re living and dossing down in the shacks. Food is good though. We landed in a nice area, about half way between the shore and the nearest range of mountains, so we expect to be able to access and examine a wide sample of this planet’s endemic species, both fauna and flora.
In the meanwhile, we just while away most of our time basking in the sun of that system. It’s amazing how this planet looks like Earth. The sun is almost the same, there’s a moon more or less as big as ours, atmosphere is close too. After exploring water worlds upon water worlds, this one sounds refreshing. Clouds, grass, trees, even birds. This world could be Earth’s twin.
Apparently there are some differences though. Obliquity is less than Earth’s which yields milder winters but cooler summers. Proteins and DNA are not exactly the same, as could be expected, but nothing harmful has been detected by the probes. Not like that planet where organisms used strychnine as a respiratory medium.
At first sight, this one should be a cushy number. Cool, since I’m through with that shit after this. Time to retire, folks.
Ahead of her, as far as her eye could see, spread a large, flat expand of barren land where huge boulders peppered a dark, rocky soil. Bushes of heather, briar, bramble or other scrub vainly tried to liven up the landscape. But what was the most eerie was that faint golden glow that blanketed every object, every square inch of that plateau. Daring Do looked down at her hooves. They too were covered in that glowing dust.
So the legend has some truth to it, she thought. Grandma stories about spirits and wicked souls sentenced to roam the place, lost in perpetual twilight. Spirits she never had believed in. Nowhere in her explorations of gloomy necropolises and forlorn temples had she ever met some sort of “mental” force that could pass off for a ghost. That was best left to scare children or simpletons away.
However the twilight was real. And what caused that weird, eldritch glow, she had no clue. It wasn’t magic for sure: magic could make an object, or a wall, shine, but with a flickering, wavering light. That one was faint, but steady. Also no magic she knew of could turn a whole plateau into a huge firefly.
She went ahead, leaving behind her a dark trail that cut into that golden layer as heavens turned pitch black and the moon crept over the horizon. Each step bore her deeper into the heart of the mystery. She needed to know. To know why this desert existed, why all the ancient maps of it had been destroyed and why it was, alone of all places in Equestria, the one forbidden on pain of immediate exile to Tartarus.
Day 30
Construction is over! This morning, the shuttle ferried the last equipment. The technicians turned the main power plant on, and miracle! It worked. We have shelters, we have light, we have heat, we have instruments and work enough to fill the next five years we’ll spend here. There was a brief ceremony, as usual, and then we elected the head of the community. No surprise here as Jennifer was the only candidate. She’s a physicist. Why would physicists be hired on an expedition like this? It’s not like the universal laws will break down in that tiny part of the cosmos. Beats me. Anyways. I don’t dislike her, but she’s really bossy and sometimes she goes bonkers at the drop of a hat. I wonder how she will manage.
Then we said goodbye to the crew, they boarded the shuttle and were gone. One hour later I had the privilege to greet the captain on the radio just before the ship went light-speed. So long mates, see you in five years.
We got the rest of the day off. Serious business begins tomorrow. We can’t wait to explore this place! In the meantime I have to check on all the portable radio equipment. We’re going to need it from tomorrow on.
There was no real obscurity here, no real shadow. Daring Do had been walking for two hours, picking her way between the boulders and the shrubs, when weariness finally overwhelmed her. She stopped, dropped her saddlebag. There was nothing to graze around her. Nothing to drink either. Fortunately, she had enough rations to survive a full week. More than enough to unravel that riddle.
She collected some tinder and kindled a small fire while munching food. She looked absentmindedly at the stars, scuffling the ground with her hind hooves.
She heard a soft tinkle. Daring Do’s head jerked down. Next to her hooves, under the glowing powder, something gleamed. She bent and picked up a small silvery disc. She examined it. It was smooth, round with a slight bulge in the centre. The edge was—Daring Do shuddered. There was a tiny slit that ran all around the edge. She put the—medallion?—on the boulder she sat on, and fished a knife out of her bag. She inserted the sharp edge into the slit, and carefully pried the medallion open. A small, white thing fell on to the ground. She bent to pick it up.
It was a tiny tooth. And not a pony one.
Day 90
Everything’s going hunky-dory… The various scientific squads are working at their top performance. The biologists are on cloud nine: they have already identified and classified over a hundred yet unknown species. The chemists had been busy analysing zillions of soil and underground water samples. The astronomers keep scanning the moon and computing the orbit of every possible object in this solar system. And for my part, I am constantly monitoring the flow of data that we pour into the subspace transmitters.
Problem is, as I expected, with Jennifer. Grand boss was dumped by her current, well now former, lover, Bruce, the head mechanics. Since that fateful happenstance two weeks ago, she’s decided to take it out on everyone. Like the other day her coffee machine went on the fritz and she almost stoned the poor guy that was sent to fix it. She’s really shotgunning round, so you’d better hit the deck, hunch down and ride it out. Hopefully I have little to do with her, and the transmitters work tiptop.
And, oh yeah, first crops of wheat and oat are growing. Agronomists are delighted and we can’t wait to taste our first true local bread.
The sun came up the next morning in an overcast sky, spilling glum light over the stony desert. Daring Do awoke, stretched her muscles and flapped the wings she couldn’t use: flying over the land was too risky, she could be spotted from afar. Griffons had piercing eyes, and would be keen to report to Celestia. No, she had to get to ground. Crawl on her hooves. Be a worm in a can of rocks.
She pulled a map out of her bag. It was a self-hoof-made reproduction of an old parchment she’d found in a forgotten section of a remote library. Probably the only specimen that had survived the systematic enterprise of destruction all the others had been subjected to. Not that it showed much about the plateau itself, which was still depicted as a blank area. But the eye-watering, steep and perilous trail she’d had to tread to get there was clearly indicated.
She took a pen and a ruler, and drew a straight line from the point where the path ended into that blank area westward. She didn’t need a compass: she’d travelled straight towards the sunset, and her years spent roaming the country had given her a good grasp of her usual walking speed. She would have now to turn north if she wanted to explore the centre of the region, in the hope that she’d find something there. What exactly, she didn’t know. But there had got to be something. Boulders and shrubs and glowing dust weren’t enough to explain an ancient ban, so ancient in fact that it seemed to precede any writ she could put her hoof on.
She ate a light breakfast, drank a few drops from her flask. Then she packed up her stuff and set out to the heart of this wasteland.
Day 150
I can’t believe it: one hundred and fifty days since we first landed here. It just seems to have passed like a dream.
Everything’s going fine. More species, deeper analyses, more theories, more knowledge. It seems we now have completed our exploration of the neighbourhood, so a team has been sent out to the mountains, and another one starts tomorrow for the seashore. We still have a lot to explore, let alone to see how the species react to season change.
Meanwhile, we’ve got new company. That was a little unexpected, but two days ago around noon a herd of quadrupeds came out of the blue to visit us. They’re nice, very gentle, they look like our ponies back on Earth, except that their coat come in all variety of colours, and they have a strange splotch on their flank where various colours intertwine, like a primitive design. They look at you with wide, mournful doe eyes as if they were begging for something or expecting you did something for them. They love to be petted. Everyone’s fallen for them, especially Jennifer, who has officially adopted one as the mascot of the expedition. There’s a poll going on about how we should name her (it’s a mare). Urania seems to be the current shoo-in. For the time being, they’re just hanging around, but we’ll soon build a corral for them.
By the way. Speaking about Jennifer, she’s found another victim to slake her sexual appetite. It’s Dave. Dave is a geneticist. Nice guy, looks cool with a big beard, long hair and a round paunch, but I’m sure somehow he’s a freak. I peeked at his rap sheet. Dude’s been suspended twice for “unethical experiments and behaviour”. No other details. Sounds strange. Why is he here?
I don’t know, but I have a bad feeling about this.
Daring Do had been walking all morning long. Her way was not difficult anymore, as the land was flat, but it was boring, and that boringness whittled away her strength. It was as if each step, instead of bearing her ahead, left her at the same place, again and again. Much like walking on a treadmill. Nothing cropped up in the landscape. Boulders came after boulder, shrubs after shrub, brambles after bramble. Only the motion of the sun in the sky gave her a sense of progression.
And that silence. No birds. No animals. No spring, no running water. A desolate, seemingly infinite mineral landscape. She stopped and sat on yet another boulder, then drew out her map and examined it thoughtfully. Despite the dense layer of clouds, the temperature had risen well above the eighties, and she’d better lay down during the hottest hours rather than sweat and squander her water away.
So she lounged against the boulder in its shadow and dozed off.
When she opened her eyes it was already late afternoon. The sun was already skidding down and the temperature had dropped significantly. It was high time she resumed her walk. She stood up and looked around.
Was it the position of the sun in the sky or some other strange effect of perspective, but it was obvious to her: the next boulder, and those beyond it, seemed to be perfectly aligned. As if they had been intentionally laid out to mark the limits of a… Could it be that?
She stood up, walked past the rock and kneeled, grubbing the ground. Pebbles. There were pebbles below the dirt. Pebbles carefully set one along the other, in a clear geometric design. Ancient and weathered, but still there after all this time. Thrilled by that discovery, she wiped the dust off on a larger area, unearthing more cobbles, until at last she had uncovered a tract a couple of metres wide.
Unquestionably, on the ground lay the relics of a former road.
Day 320
Well, we’re way past the first anniversary of our arrival, since this planet orbits in 295 of its days around its sun. We had a brief ceremony, then a buffet whose food was cooked with the seeds we grew in the soil plus some local veggies (I must admit the local turnip tastes much better than our own), and the heads of the various sections took the floor in turn to summarise the results of this first year.
All would’ve gone fine but for Jennifer’s speech. You know she’s ever been obsessed with mythology, right? So now she’s got on her mind to create fantasy creatures with those coloured ponies as guinea pigs. And she’ll use her sock puppet for that (I mean Dave), with his benediction. What does she risk? We’re an isolated colony, away from the plied routes, so no one really cares about what’s happening here, and certainly no police’s going to swing by to inquire on some sort of freaky experiment.
Anyway, so this morning we finally saw the result of that tinkering. Sucklings, two of them. They’re adorable alright, but it just gives me the creeps. One is a sort of pegasus, that Dave obtained by inserting into the genome strands of DNA he picked up from a species of local birds. Wings are nerveless though, it seems,
so the poor foal feels rather embarrassed by them more than anything else.
The other is. No, better, looks like a unicorn. Jennifer boasted it’s the result of unique synthesis of local DNA from Earth DNA (she said Dave selected a rhinoceros). Like translating a DNA from our own coding to another one. Shit, I think can’t explain it properly. I got the drift of it but the technical details are beyond my ken. Anyways. A first she said. And she eyed at Dave with a bright smile.
So that’s that. We now have two foals, one with wings and the other with a strange pimple in the middle of the forehead which is bound to become a horn as it grows, if everything goes according to the plan. It’s all amazing and fun, but I wonder what the next step will be.
The city. She trod in the middle of ruins. Blocks and rubbles covered in luminescent dust, under the night sky. Ghostly. If a place in Equestria ever deserved that adjective, it was this one.
But had it ever been a city, she thought. Wraiths of former buildings, sometimes mere shallow tranches left on the ground, sometimes remains of walls made up of pitted, cracked blackened bricks. Deformed grey blocks, charred and melted; chunks of coloured slag; pieces of large, rusted girders, snapped and bent like cattail stems; sundry metallic debris strewn all over the place. Sometimes, evidences of former storeys, broken stairs. Nothing engraved, no inscription that could’ve hinted at an explanation, or even at what those buildings were meant for.
One thing was certain, however: whatever had happened here had to be sudden and cataclysmic.
She slowly walked along the main path, looking right and left, in search of—she didn’t know. Those ruins were unlike all she had ever seen. It wasn’t like a town, or even a village, inhabited for centuries. Its design was too simple: a single street with buildings lining it, one after the other. No trace of a temple, a palace or even a town hall. Every building seemed to have looked alike. It could’ve been a simple hamlet, but the complexity of the architecture contradicted this. She was at a loss to understand.
Pondering of this riddle and looking left and right at the ruins, she reached the end of the former town and halted. A furlong ahead, the road stopped short, interrupted abruptly by the lip of a round crater.
Day 600
Well, that’s our second anniversary, more or less. A large team of various scientists has been sent away with one of the two shuttles to explore the remote places of this continent. They’ve a lot on their slate, since they intend to roam from the northernmost point to the southernmost. They won’t stay a lot of time in each location, though. Ten days, just enough to carry out a small exploration and pick up whatever species they deem fit. The most promising plots will be investigated in details later.
Meanwhile, I’m still here, caught in the daily grind. When I’m not at work processing signals, I spend a lot of time tending our herd of multicoloured ponies. The two freak foals have grown up, and the unicorn one, I must say, really looks like a unicorn. I’m not sure how Dave achieved this, but the guy certainly knows his stuff. I’m just wondering if they could create a whole new race. I think Dave had some plans to mate them as soon as they’ll be of age.
But… It’s like. I don’t know. I’m sure this is not his final say. I’m sure there’s more to come. I’ve heard other geneticists talking. They’ve mentioned Dave now has a laboratory of his own, and works on a project no one really knows about, except Jennifer of course. This sounds more creepy than before. Like the return of doctor Frankenstein… We’ll see.
Daring Do stood still on the brink of the crater. It was about a hundred yards wide, not really deep, but steep enough to forbid any easy descent, let alone the prickly vegetation that had invaded its edges. She didn’t want to scramble her way up either, so for the first time since many days, she flared her wings and flew inside, alighting on the bottom. The soil here had been scorched, seared by such a heat that it had melted and formed like a huge plate of earthenware. She stomped a hoof against that brown layer but it was thick, real thick. Something here must have exploded, she thought, producing a blistering hot blast that has destroyed anything around. No wonder I found no tombs or cemetery. They must’ve all been turned to ashes within fractions of a second. At least they’ve not suffered.
But what was it that could’ve caused such a dramatic downfall?
She pondered for a while, then shook her head, defeated. She would have to find other clues to unravel the mystery, so she took off and flew to the opposite brink hoping to find more. But to her dismay, she couldn’t find any trace of the road. The crater was obviously its terminus. Beyond it, the usual barren landscape with random boulders spread out to the horizon. The key had to be found in those ruins, or nowhere else.
She looked at the scenery. Ghastly, she thought again. Ghastly and somehow unreal. Everything levelled to the ground, wiped out, blasted out of existence in an instant. What wicked device had been responsible for this?
Yet. Yet, what was this small mound, a mile away on the right?
Day 800
The expedition is back, and they’ve a pocketful of new discoveries to transmit home. They were pretty excited. Also, they brought us back tons of blueberry-like berries. They’re delicious. I’ve always doted on blueberries. That’s more I ever asked.
Day 805
Oh God almighty. I can’t believe this happened. That guy is a madman. A wicked freak. I’m sending a report right away. I don’t care if I’m fired or jailed or even bumped off, but he must be stopped at all cost. He’s managed to mix up genes of several species, even human ones, if I’m not mistaken to bring up those… Look, I have no name for them. Outside, they’re like those pony foals, two of them, one white, one blue. They both have wings and a tiny horn. That’s okay, but inside, oh god. They look at you with those eyes. I mean, that’s not normal eyes. They’re intent, they’re expressive, they’re like real baby eyes. They’re sapient eyes. I bet those freaking animals think. I’m 100% positive of it. That big fucking asshole has just created thinking ponies. I don’t know how but he did, and he swaggered all day through the building showing those monsters to all people. He seems to be on top the world, like those two were his own children, and Jennifer certainly is too. They’ve been christened Luna and Celestia. The former is the blue one, the latter the white one.
But I can’t just stay here and applaud and butter up the guy’s wit. They’re both dangerous loonies. Who knows what they will plan next? I’m filing a report right away and I’ll transmit it to the nearest base as soon as possible.
The mound was slightly protruding. It wasn’t symmetrical. No, rather it was slanting, as if something had been planted obliquely into the ground, and only its rear part emerged. She climbed the gentle slope, and found herself atop of it, wondering what this elevation could mean. Something felt strange, out of place. This wasn’t a building for sure, but this wasn’t natural either. Like—
She tossed her saddlebag on to the ground, pulled a small shovel out of it, and began to dig. She shovelled the earth out deeper and deeper for a full hour until the blade clanged against something, something glistening and hard. Frantically, she enlarged the hole until she had exposed a large portion of a metallic wall.
In the middle of which a door sat.
Day 950
I’m scared. Every night I make nightmares. I dream those ponies enter the building, armed with spades and clubs and they get to me and they give me a beating and at the end they drive those spades into my belly, and then I yell and I wake up doused in cold sweat. I think I can’t bear it anymore, but still two years to go before the curtain fails.
The two freaks grow up. I’ve seen them yesterday. They look at you with the same eyes and they don’t neigh. I mean, what they do is not neighing. It’s baby whining and babble. It definitely has a human quality to it. I’m sure they’re gonna talk. I can feel it. I sticks out like a sore thumb.
Everyone says I’m freaking out for trifles. I’m sure I’m not. Give them time enough and they’ll learn to read and write too, I’m sure.
Anyway. Another team has been sent away to the shore. They will study sea flora and fauna. That’s going to take a full year. It’s the last planned exploration. After that, the last year should be devoted to data crunching and analyses, before we leave and maybe a permanent settlement takes our place. I wonder if
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F
This is getting annoying. Power failures. Not for long, but one, two minutes, then all back to normal. Something is wrong with the power plant, obviously. I think Bruce is scheduled to get inside and fix things tomorrow. It’s a pain in the ass because each time I’ve to reboot all the communication computers and stuff, and we’ve to start the subspace sync from scratch, which can take hours. I thought atomic generators were manufactured to last for centuries, but that one obviously is defective. I hope Bruce can handle this, or it’s going to plague the rest of the mission.
For myself, I’ve to check out the radio equipment of the shuttle tomorrow. That’ll keep me busy for a few days, I think.
The handle rotated, and the door slid open slowly. With a soft hissing, a draft of stale air blew from inside. Daring Do lit up a torch that she waved along the sides of the opening. There was a corridor beyond the door, that led further within the—the what? She still didn’t know.
Picking up her saddlebag, she stepped inside. All was dark and silent, except for the clang of her hooves on the metallic floor. The corridor wasn’t wide, but it was quite high by pony standards. She’d taken a dozen steps ahead when she arrived at a tee-intersection with another corridor. And for the first time, she saw something written on the walls. She examined the letters painted on the wall, barely recognising the most ancient form of Equestrian writing she was familiar with. It wasn’t even exactly that writing, rather it was, in a way, a still more primitive, more ancient form of it. She squinted, trying hard to decipher the word, but despite she could recognise the letters, it meant nothing to her. What could cockpit or reactor possibly mean? Addled, she decided to turn in the direction pointed by the first one of those “words”—she could always turn back and explore the other part later.
The corridor was wider than the first one. At regular intervals, lateral doors or smaller corridors led off it. They all bore strange inscriptions, in the same hoary writing. She picked up words like Thermoregulation, Dynostat, Cryocapsules or even others that didn’t ring even the remotest echo of a bell in her mind.
At the end of the main corridor was another door. She turned the handle, and, like its entry twin, it slid open. Behind it Daring Do saw a large room, full of—she didn’t know. Panels? Walls? All studded with buttons and tiny lights, some of them still alive after all this time. She stepped in.
She figured out the opposite wall wasn’t really a wall. Rather, it was a sort of picture window, as if to allow the people inside to look ahead. A weird console stood in the middle of that room, also full of switches and lights. Daring Do came closer and examined it. Most of the lights had small, meaningless words engraved next to them. She flicked a few switches, at random, in the hope something would happen. Some lights blinked on and off, but soon all was steady again.
Nothing happened.
She sighed. There was nothing to be found in this weird room. Except—
Except there was something, something thin and square, lying on the chair, so covered in dust she’d almost missed it. She gingerly put her torch down on the console and grabbed the—she blew hard on it until the dust layer had gone. Diary was written on top of it. It was a notebook. She flicked through it. It was written in the same, ancient characters. But she recognised old words, words of an ancient language she’d learnt by herself in university out of yellowed volumes, and thought she’d never meet again. Words that brought back dark glimpses of a reality buried under centuries of oblivion.
In the feeble and guttering light of her torch, she opened the notebook at the first page and began to read.
The writing was not the same. It was rough, and bare legible. There was no date.
The atomic generator blew up. We were away on mission to inventory the sea fauna, working on the beach when we saw the flash and we heard the sound. And then, suddenly, the protection screen snapped on, covering the whole area under a dark, impenetrable roof. The screen is impenetrable to both light and matter, and there’s no way to reach in and no way for anything to reach out. It’s totally opaque.
We were stranded outside. No way to get back in. We didn’t know what happened, and I still don’t know. But we had no choice, so we just settled in the valley, waiting for the rescue ship to come.
But it never did. Crew must have spotted the disaster, and, with every means of communication destroyed, figured out we were all dead. They had their data anyway. So we built houses and waited for the field to go away, knowing it would when radioactivity would’ve reached acceptable levels again. We estimated a couple of decades, because of iodine. Maybe a bit more.
But, no, oh no, we weren’t prepared for this.
A week ago the field disappeared. We woke up, and it was gone. And we were all happy, because it meant we could probably rescue some equipment in the shuttle and use it to communicate with the nearest base.
We were ready to set out when it happened.
Our ponies attacked us.
No one knows how they’d survived, but they had. And it seems they had fed on the energy that was released—somehow a property of their weird mutated mitochondria? They were scores of them, flying low and pelting boulders at us. How did they learn to use their wings? And a barrage of unicorns casting rays of energy, I have no idea how they can do that. And high above, soaring in the sky, the two devils created by Dave who seemed to give orders to the others.
We tried to resist, but we were far too few, and unarmed. We were scattered away. Hopefully I had taken and kept a lasegun with me. I used it to put some of those freaks down, and then I crawled away, unnoticed. For a week I’ve been lying low, hiding, walking at night, hiding under boulders during the day. What happened to the others, I don’t know. They must’ve been killed.
Finally, I’m back here, I don’t know how I made it whole. They must’ve believed they’d killed everybody. All the buildings’ve been razed to the ground by the explosion. Poor guys inside. I found the shuttle on the flank, half buried into the ground. Fortunately, no pony inside. They’re not smart enough to figure out how to open the door. I’ve broadcast a distress message on the subspace channels, I hope someone answer it. Meanwhile, I’ll put myself in hibernation. I found this notebook lying on the ground next to Steve, the radio officer. He was dead, of course, after all these years exposed to radiation. Whoever comes here, please turn the cryocapsule off and—
Daring Do started as a faint sound echoed in the corridor behind her. She spun around. Lights in the corridor had been turned on, and—horror—a shadow was coming towards her.
She felt paralysed. Transfixed.
Some… someliving thing swayed forward, tottering from wall to wall, until it filled all the door frame. It stopped there. “Hello?” it said in a harsh voice, that rose barely over a whisper.
Daring Do was too terrified to answer.
The shape reached out for a switch in the wall and suddenly full light flooded the room. Daring Do reflexively put a leg over her eyes to blot out the crude light.
“But, but…” said the voice. “You… you’re a pony?”
Unable to move or to speak, Daring Do silently watched the being reach for something behind it. When its—leg?—reappeared, it grasped a small, metallic device with a snub nose, that it slowly pointed at her.
“No please, please no. NOOOOO!!!” Daring Do shouted.
She sat there for a long time, engrossed in the contemplation of the scenery, until the shrill cry of a kestrel roused her from her reverie. Sighing, she stood up, picked up her gear and resumed her ascent. Just another half mile of gentle slope to reach the border of the tableland she’d set out to explore a fortnight ago.
As she stomped forward, the limestone wall on her left sank, until it was no more than a humble hedge barely high enough to blot out sight.
One step ahead.
Another one.
The hedge fell away completely. She raised her head.
Daring Do’s heart skipped a beat and her eyes widened.
Day 7
Well okay. I admit keeping a diary is somewhat childish but as the radio operator I get a lot of free time and I just don’t want to potter around or mess up with the others. I’ve always been attracted to literature so why not? That’s a good way to give it a go. I’ll keep that private though, the boss’s log will take care of all official reports.
The machines are still humming and digging, building our future homes, the labs and all the stuff that will be needed for this five year stay. In the meanwhile, we’re living and dossing down in the shacks. Food is good though. We landed in a nice area, about half way between the shore and the nearest range of mountains, so we expect to be able to access and examine a wide sample of this planet’s endemic species, both fauna and flora.
In the meanwhile, we just while away most of our time basking in the sun of that system. It’s amazing how this planet looks like Earth. The sun is almost the same, there’s a moon more or less as big as ours, atmosphere is close too. After exploring water worlds upon water worlds, this one sounds refreshing. Clouds, grass, trees, even birds. This world could be Earth’s twin.
Apparently there are some differences though. Obliquity is less than Earth’s which yields milder winters but cooler summers. Proteins and DNA are not exactly the same, as could be expected, but nothing harmful has been detected by the probes. Not like that planet where organisms used strychnine as a respiratory medium.
At first sight, this one should be a cushy number. Cool, since I’m through with that shit after this. Time to retire, folks.
Ahead of her, as far as her eye could see, spread a large, flat expand of barren land where huge boulders peppered a dark, rocky soil. Bushes of heather, briar, bramble or other scrub vainly tried to liven up the landscape. But what was the most eerie was that faint golden glow that blanketed every object, every square inch of that plateau. Daring Do looked down at her hooves. They too were covered in that glowing dust.
So the legend has some truth to it, she thought. Grandma stories about spirits and wicked souls sentenced to roam the place, lost in perpetual twilight. Spirits she never had believed in. Nowhere in her explorations of gloomy necropolises and forlorn temples had she ever met some sort of “mental” force that could pass off for a ghost. That was best left to scare children or simpletons away.
However the twilight was real. And what caused that weird, eldritch glow, she had no clue. It wasn’t magic for sure: magic could make an object, or a wall, shine, but with a flickering, wavering light. That one was faint, but steady. Also no magic she knew of could turn a whole plateau into a huge firefly.
She went ahead, leaving behind her a dark trail that cut into that golden layer as heavens turned pitch black and the moon crept over the horizon. Each step bore her deeper into the heart of the mystery. She needed to know. To know why this desert existed, why all the ancient maps of it had been destroyed and why it was, alone of all places in Equestria, the one forbidden on pain of immediate exile to Tartarus.
Day 30
Construction is over! This morning, the shuttle ferried the last equipment. The technicians turned the main power plant on, and miracle! It worked. We have shelters, we have light, we have heat, we have instruments and work enough to fill the next five years we’ll spend here. There was a brief ceremony, as usual, and then we elected the head of the community. No surprise here as Jennifer was the only candidate. She’s a physicist. Why would physicists be hired on an expedition like this? It’s not like the universal laws will break down in that tiny part of the cosmos. Beats me. Anyways. I don’t dislike her, but she’s really bossy and sometimes she goes bonkers at the drop of a hat. I wonder how she will manage.
Then we said goodbye to the crew, they boarded the shuttle and were gone. One hour later I had the privilege to greet the captain on the radio just before the ship went light-speed. So long mates, see you in five years.
We got the rest of the day off. Serious business begins tomorrow. We can’t wait to explore this place! In the meantime I have to check on all the portable radio equipment. We’re going to need it from tomorrow on.
There was no real obscurity here, no real shadow. Daring Do had been walking for two hours, picking her way between the boulders and the shrubs, when weariness finally overwhelmed her. She stopped, dropped her saddlebag. There was nothing to graze around her. Nothing to drink either. Fortunately, she had enough rations to survive a full week. More than enough to unravel that riddle.
She collected some tinder and kindled a small fire while munching food. She looked absentmindedly at the stars, scuffling the ground with her hind hooves.
She heard a soft tinkle. Daring Do’s head jerked down. Next to her hooves, under the glowing powder, something gleamed. She bent and picked up a small silvery disc. She examined it. It was smooth, round with a slight bulge in the centre. The edge was—Daring Do shuddered. There was a tiny slit that ran all around the edge. She put the—medallion?—on the boulder she sat on, and fished a knife out of her bag. She inserted the sharp edge into the slit, and carefully pried the medallion open. A small, white thing fell on to the ground. She bent to pick it up.
It was a tiny tooth. And not a pony one.
Day 90
Everything’s going hunky-dory… The various scientific squads are working at their top performance. The biologists are on cloud nine: they have already identified and classified over a hundred yet unknown species. The chemists had been busy analysing zillions of soil and underground water samples. The astronomers keep scanning the moon and computing the orbit of every possible object in this solar system. And for my part, I am constantly monitoring the flow of data that we pour into the subspace transmitters.
Problem is, as I expected, with Jennifer. Grand boss was dumped by her current, well now former, lover, Bruce, the head mechanics. Since that fateful happenstance two weeks ago, she’s decided to take it out on everyone. Like the other day her coffee machine went on the fritz and she almost stoned the poor guy that was sent to fix it. She’s really shotgunning round, so you’d better hit the deck, hunch down and ride it out. Hopefully I have little to do with her, and the transmitters work tiptop.
And, oh yeah, first crops of wheat and oat are growing. Agronomists are delighted and we can’t wait to taste our first true local bread.
The sun came up the next morning in an overcast sky, spilling glum light over the stony desert. Daring Do awoke, stretched her muscles and flapped the wings she couldn’t use: flying over the land was too risky, she could be spotted from afar. Griffons had piercing eyes, and would be keen to report to Celestia. No, she had to get to ground. Crawl on her hooves. Be a worm in a can of rocks.
She pulled a map out of her bag. It was a self-hoof-made reproduction of an old parchment she’d found in a forgotten section of a remote library. Probably the only specimen that had survived the systematic enterprise of destruction all the others had been subjected to. Not that it showed much about the plateau itself, which was still depicted as a blank area. But the eye-watering, steep and perilous trail she’d had to tread to get there was clearly indicated.
She took a pen and a ruler, and drew a straight line from the point where the path ended into that blank area westward. She didn’t need a compass: she’d travelled straight towards the sunset, and her years spent roaming the country had given her a good grasp of her usual walking speed. She would have now to turn north if she wanted to explore the centre of the region, in the hope that she’d find something there. What exactly, she didn’t know. But there had got to be something. Boulders and shrubs and glowing dust weren’t enough to explain an ancient ban, so ancient in fact that it seemed to precede any writ she could put her hoof on.
She ate a light breakfast, drank a few drops from her flask. Then she packed up her stuff and set out to the heart of this wasteland.
Day 150
I can’t believe it: one hundred and fifty days since we first landed here. It just seems to have passed like a dream.
Everything’s going fine. More species, deeper analyses, more theories, more knowledge. It seems we now have completed our exploration of the neighbourhood, so a team has been sent out to the mountains, and another one starts tomorrow for the seashore. We still have a lot to explore, let alone to see how the species react to season change.
Meanwhile, we’ve got new company. That was a little unexpected, but two days ago around noon a herd of quadrupeds came out of the blue to visit us. They’re nice, very gentle, they look like our ponies back on Earth, except that their coat come in all variety of colours, and they have a strange splotch on their flank where various colours intertwine, like a primitive design. They look at you with wide, mournful doe eyes as if they were begging for something or expecting you did something for them. They love to be petted. Everyone’s fallen for them, especially Jennifer, who has officially adopted one as the mascot of the expedition. There’s a poll going on about how we should name her (it’s a mare). Urania seems to be the current shoo-in. For the time being, they’re just hanging around, but we’ll soon build a corral for them.
By the way. Speaking about Jennifer, she’s found another victim to slake her sexual appetite. It’s Dave. Dave is a geneticist. Nice guy, looks cool with a big beard, long hair and a round paunch, but I’m sure somehow he’s a freak. I peeked at his rap sheet. Dude’s been suspended twice for “unethical experiments and behaviour”. No other details. Sounds strange. Why is he here?
I don’t know, but I have a bad feeling about this.
Daring Do had been walking all morning long. Her way was not difficult anymore, as the land was flat, but it was boring, and that boringness whittled away her strength. It was as if each step, instead of bearing her ahead, left her at the same place, again and again. Much like walking on a treadmill. Nothing cropped up in the landscape. Boulders came after boulder, shrubs after shrub, brambles after bramble. Only the motion of the sun in the sky gave her a sense of progression.
And that silence. No birds. No animals. No spring, no running water. A desolate, seemingly infinite mineral landscape. She stopped and sat on yet another boulder, then drew out her map and examined it thoughtfully. Despite the dense layer of clouds, the temperature had risen well above the eighties, and she’d better lay down during the hottest hours rather than sweat and squander her water away.
So she lounged against the boulder in its shadow and dozed off.
When she opened her eyes it was already late afternoon. The sun was already skidding down and the temperature had dropped significantly. It was high time she resumed her walk. She stood up and looked around.
Was it the position of the sun in the sky or some other strange effect of perspective, but it was obvious to her: the next boulder, and those beyond it, seemed to be perfectly aligned. As if they had been intentionally laid out to mark the limits of a… Could it be that?
She stood up, walked past the rock and kneeled, grubbing the ground. Pebbles. There were pebbles below the dirt. Pebbles carefully set one along the other, in a clear geometric design. Ancient and weathered, but still there after all this time. Thrilled by that discovery, she wiped the dust off on a larger area, unearthing more cobbles, until at last she had uncovered a tract a couple of metres wide.
Unquestionably, on the ground lay the relics of a former road.
Day 320
Well, we’re way past the first anniversary of our arrival, since this planet orbits in 295 of its days around its sun. We had a brief ceremony, then a buffet whose food was cooked with the seeds we grew in the soil plus some local veggies (I must admit the local turnip tastes much better than our own), and the heads of the various sections took the floor in turn to summarise the results of this first year.
All would’ve gone fine but for Jennifer’s speech. You know she’s ever been obsessed with mythology, right? So now she’s got on her mind to create fantasy creatures with those coloured ponies as guinea pigs. And she’ll use her sock puppet for that (I mean Dave), with his benediction. What does she risk? We’re an isolated colony, away from the plied routes, so no one really cares about what’s happening here, and certainly no police’s going to swing by to inquire on some sort of freaky experiment.
Anyway, so this morning we finally saw the result of that tinkering. Sucklings, two of them. They’re adorable alright, but it just gives me the creeps. One is a sort of pegasus, that Dave obtained by inserting into the genome strands of DNA he picked up from a species of local birds. Wings are nerveless though, it seems,
so the poor foal feels rather embarrassed by them more than anything else.
The other is. No, better, looks like a unicorn. Jennifer boasted it’s the result of unique synthesis of local DNA from Earth DNA (she said Dave selected a rhinoceros). Like translating a DNA from our own coding to another one. Shit, I think can’t explain it properly. I got the drift of it but the technical details are beyond my ken. Anyways. A first she said. And she eyed at Dave with a bright smile.
So that’s that. We now have two foals, one with wings and the other with a strange pimple in the middle of the forehead which is bound to become a horn as it grows, if everything goes according to the plan. It’s all amazing and fun, but I wonder what the next step will be.
The city. She trod in the middle of ruins. Blocks and rubbles covered in luminescent dust, under the night sky. Ghostly. If a place in Equestria ever deserved that adjective, it was this one.
But had it ever been a city, she thought. Wraiths of former buildings, sometimes mere shallow tranches left on the ground, sometimes remains of walls made up of pitted, cracked blackened bricks. Deformed grey blocks, charred and melted; chunks of coloured slag; pieces of large, rusted girders, snapped and bent like cattail stems; sundry metallic debris strewn all over the place. Sometimes, evidences of former storeys, broken stairs. Nothing engraved, no inscription that could’ve hinted at an explanation, or even at what those buildings were meant for.
One thing was certain, however: whatever had happened here had to be sudden and cataclysmic.
She slowly walked along the main path, looking right and left, in search of—she didn’t know. Those ruins were unlike all she had ever seen. It wasn’t like a town, or even a village, inhabited for centuries. Its design was too simple: a single street with buildings lining it, one after the other. No trace of a temple, a palace or even a town hall. Every building seemed to have looked alike. It could’ve been a simple hamlet, but the complexity of the architecture contradicted this. She was at a loss to understand.
Pondering of this riddle and looking left and right at the ruins, she reached the end of the former town and halted. A furlong ahead, the road stopped short, interrupted abruptly by the lip of a round crater.
Day 600
Well, that’s our second anniversary, more or less. A large team of various scientists has been sent away with one of the two shuttles to explore the remote places of this continent. They’ve a lot on their slate, since they intend to roam from the northernmost point to the southernmost. They won’t stay a lot of time in each location, though. Ten days, just enough to carry out a small exploration and pick up whatever species they deem fit. The most promising plots will be investigated in details later.
Meanwhile, I’m still here, caught in the daily grind. When I’m not at work processing signals, I spend a lot of time tending our herd of multicoloured ponies. The two freak foals have grown up, and the unicorn one, I must say, really looks like a unicorn. I’m not sure how Dave achieved this, but the guy certainly knows his stuff. I’m just wondering if they could create a whole new race. I think Dave had some plans to mate them as soon as they’ll be of age.
But… It’s like. I don’t know. I’m sure this is not his final say. I’m sure there’s more to come. I’ve heard other geneticists talking. They’ve mentioned Dave now has a laboratory of his own, and works on a project no one really knows about, except Jennifer of course. This sounds more creepy than before. Like the return of doctor Frankenstein… We’ll see.
Daring Do stood still on the brink of the crater. It was about a hundred yards wide, not really deep, but steep enough to forbid any easy descent, let alone the prickly vegetation that had invaded its edges. She didn’t want to scramble her way up either, so for the first time since many days, she flared her wings and flew inside, alighting on the bottom. The soil here had been scorched, seared by such a heat that it had melted and formed like a huge plate of earthenware. She stomped a hoof against that brown layer but it was thick, real thick. Something here must have exploded, she thought, producing a blistering hot blast that has destroyed anything around. No wonder I found no tombs or cemetery. They must’ve all been turned to ashes within fractions of a second. At least they’ve not suffered.
But what was it that could’ve caused such a dramatic downfall?
She pondered for a while, then shook her head, defeated. She would have to find other clues to unravel the mystery, so she took off and flew to the opposite brink hoping to find more. But to her dismay, she couldn’t find any trace of the road. The crater was obviously its terminus. Beyond it, the usual barren landscape with random boulders spread out to the horizon. The key had to be found in those ruins, or nowhere else.
She looked at the scenery. Ghastly, she thought again. Ghastly and somehow unreal. Everything levelled to the ground, wiped out, blasted out of existence in an instant. What wicked device had been responsible for this?
Yet. Yet, what was this small mound, a mile away on the right?
Day 800
The expedition is back, and they’ve a pocketful of new discoveries to transmit home. They were pretty excited. Also, they brought us back tons of blueberry-like berries. They’re delicious. I’ve always doted on blueberries. That’s more I ever asked.
Day 805
Oh God almighty. I can’t believe this happened. That guy is a madman. A wicked freak. I’m sending a report right away. I don’t care if I’m fired or jailed or even bumped off, but he must be stopped at all cost. He’s managed to mix up genes of several species, even human ones, if I’m not mistaken to bring up those… Look, I have no name for them. Outside, they’re like those pony foals, two of them, one white, one blue. They both have wings and a tiny horn. That’s okay, but inside, oh god. They look at you with those eyes. I mean, that’s not normal eyes. They’re intent, they’re expressive, they’re like real baby eyes. They’re sapient eyes. I bet those freaking animals think. I’m 100% positive of it. That big fucking asshole has just created thinking ponies. I don’t know how but he did, and he swaggered all day through the building showing those monsters to all people. He seems to be on top the world, like those two were his own children, and Jennifer certainly is too. They’ve been christened Luna and Celestia. The former is the blue one, the latter the white one.
But I can’t just stay here and applaud and butter up the guy’s wit. They’re both dangerous loonies. Who knows what they will plan next? I’m filing a report right away and I’ll transmit it to the nearest base as soon as possible.
The mound was slightly protruding. It wasn’t symmetrical. No, rather it was slanting, as if something had been planted obliquely into the ground, and only its rear part emerged. She climbed the gentle slope, and found herself atop of it, wondering what this elevation could mean. Something felt strange, out of place. This wasn’t a building for sure, but this wasn’t natural either. Like—
She tossed her saddlebag on to the ground, pulled a small shovel out of it, and began to dig. She shovelled the earth out deeper and deeper for a full hour until the blade clanged against something, something glistening and hard. Frantically, she enlarged the hole until she had exposed a large portion of a metallic wall.
In the middle of which a door sat.
Day 950
I’m scared. Every night I make nightmares. I dream those ponies enter the building, armed with spades and clubs and they get to me and they give me a beating and at the end they drive those spades into my belly, and then I yell and I wake up doused in cold sweat. I think I can’t bear it anymore, but still two years to go before the curtain fails.
The two freaks grow up. I’ve seen them yesterday. They look at you with the same eyes and they don’t neigh. I mean, what they do is not neighing. It’s baby whining and babble. It definitely has a human quality to it. I’m sure they’re gonna talk. I can feel it. I sticks out like a sore thumb.
Everyone says I’m freaking out for trifles. I’m sure I’m not. Give them time enough and they’ll learn to read and write too, I’m sure.
Anyway. Another team has been sent away to the shore. They will study sea flora and fauna. That’s going to take a full year. It’s the last planned exploration. After that, the last year should be devoted to data crunching and analyses, before we leave and maybe a permanent settlement takes our place. I wonder if
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This is getting annoying. Power failures. Not for long, but one, two minutes, then all back to normal. Something is wrong with the power plant, obviously. I think Bruce is scheduled to get inside and fix things tomorrow. It’s a pain in the ass because each time I’ve to reboot all the communication computers and stuff, and we’ve to start the subspace sync from scratch, which can take hours. I thought atomic generators were manufactured to last for centuries, but that one obviously is defective. I hope Bruce can handle this, or it’s going to plague the rest of the mission.
For myself, I’ve to check out the radio equipment of the shuttle tomorrow. That’ll keep me busy for a few days, I think.
The handle rotated, and the door slid open slowly. With a soft hissing, a draft of stale air blew from inside. Daring Do lit up a torch that she waved along the sides of the opening. There was a corridor beyond the door, that led further within the—the what? She still didn’t know.
Picking up her saddlebag, she stepped inside. All was dark and silent, except for the clang of her hooves on the metallic floor. The corridor wasn’t wide, but it was quite high by pony standards. She’d taken a dozen steps ahead when she arrived at a tee-intersection with another corridor. And for the first time, she saw something written on the walls. She examined the letters painted on the wall, barely recognising the most ancient form of Equestrian writing she was familiar with. It wasn’t even exactly that writing, rather it was, in a way, a still more primitive, more ancient form of it. She squinted, trying hard to decipher the word, but despite she could recognise the letters, it meant nothing to her. What could cockpit or reactor possibly mean? Addled, she decided to turn in the direction pointed by the first one of those “words”—she could always turn back and explore the other part later.
The corridor was wider than the first one. At regular intervals, lateral doors or smaller corridors led off it. They all bore strange inscriptions, in the same hoary writing. She picked up words like Thermoregulation, Dynostat, Cryocapsules or even others that didn’t ring even the remotest echo of a bell in her mind.
At the end of the main corridor was another door. She turned the handle, and, like its entry twin, it slid open. Behind it Daring Do saw a large room, full of—she didn’t know. Panels? Walls? All studded with buttons and tiny lights, some of them still alive after all this time. She stepped in.
She figured out the opposite wall wasn’t really a wall. Rather, it was a sort of picture window, as if to allow the people inside to look ahead. A weird console stood in the middle of that room, also full of switches and lights. Daring Do came closer and examined it. Most of the lights had small, meaningless words engraved next to them. She flicked a few switches, at random, in the hope something would happen. Some lights blinked on and off, but soon all was steady again.
Nothing happened.
She sighed. There was nothing to be found in this weird room. Except—
Except there was something, something thin and square, lying on the chair, so covered in dust she’d almost missed it. She gingerly put her torch down on the console and grabbed the—she blew hard on it until the dust layer had gone. Diary was written on top of it. It was a notebook. She flicked through it. It was written in the same, ancient characters. But she recognised old words, words of an ancient language she’d learnt by herself in university out of yellowed volumes, and thought she’d never meet again. Words that brought back dark glimpses of a reality buried under centuries of oblivion.
In the feeble and guttering light of her torch, she opened the notebook at the first page and began to read.
The writing was not the same. It was rough, and bare legible. There was no date.
The atomic generator blew up. We were away on mission to inventory the sea fauna, working on the beach when we saw the flash and we heard the sound. And then, suddenly, the protection screen snapped on, covering the whole area under a dark, impenetrable roof. The screen is impenetrable to both light and matter, and there’s no way to reach in and no way for anything to reach out. It’s totally opaque.
We were stranded outside. No way to get back in. We didn’t know what happened, and I still don’t know. But we had no choice, so we just settled in the valley, waiting for the rescue ship to come.
But it never did. Crew must have spotted the disaster, and, with every means of communication destroyed, figured out we were all dead. They had their data anyway. So we built houses and waited for the field to go away, knowing it would when radioactivity would’ve reached acceptable levels again. We estimated a couple of decades, because of iodine. Maybe a bit more.
But, no, oh no, we weren’t prepared for this.
A week ago the field disappeared. We woke up, and it was gone. And we were all happy, because it meant we could probably rescue some equipment in the shuttle and use it to communicate with the nearest base.
We were ready to set out when it happened.
Our ponies attacked us.
No one knows how they’d survived, but they had. And it seems they had fed on the energy that was released—somehow a property of their weird mutated mitochondria? They were scores of them, flying low and pelting boulders at us. How did they learn to use their wings? And a barrage of unicorns casting rays of energy, I have no idea how they can do that. And high above, soaring in the sky, the two devils created by Dave who seemed to give orders to the others.
We tried to resist, but we were far too few, and unarmed. We were scattered away. Hopefully I had taken and kept a lasegun with me. I used it to put some of those freaks down, and then I crawled away, unnoticed. For a week I’ve been lying low, hiding, walking at night, hiding under boulders during the day. What happened to the others, I don’t know. They must’ve been killed.
Finally, I’m back here, I don’t know how I made it whole. They must’ve believed they’d killed everybody. All the buildings’ve been razed to the ground by the explosion. Poor guys inside. I found the shuttle on the flank, half buried into the ground. Fortunately, no pony inside. They’re not smart enough to figure out how to open the door. I’ve broadcast a distress message on the subspace channels, I hope someone answer it. Meanwhile, I’ll put myself in hibernation. I found this notebook lying on the ground next to Steve, the radio officer. He was dead, of course, after all these years exposed to radiation. Whoever comes here, please turn the cryocapsule off and—
Daring Do started as a faint sound echoed in the corridor behind her. She spun around. Lights in the corridor had been turned on, and—horror—a shadow was coming towards her.
She felt paralysed. Transfixed.
Some… someliving thing swayed forward, tottering from wall to wall, until it filled all the door frame. It stopped there. “Hello?” it said in a harsh voice, that rose barely over a whisper.
Daring Do was too terrified to answer.
The shape reached out for a switch in the wall and suddenly full light flooded the room. Daring Do reflexively put a leg over her eyes to blot out the crude light.
“But, but…” said the voice. “You… you’re a pony?”
Unable to move or to speak, Daring Do silently watched the being reach for something behind it. When its—leg?—reappeared, it grasped a small, metallic device with a snub nose, that it slowly pointed at her.
“No please, please no. NOOOOO!!!” Daring Do shouted.
Pics
This was a interesting take on both HiE and origin stories for ponies. The slow pace was a bit jarring at first but it became better around the 4th scene.
Aside from that, this story falls short for characters development, especially Daring Do. We don't actually follow the character who have the largest palette of emotions (the human) and we follow the one whose emotions are barely described (Daring Do). So I wasn't really caught by the story.
It felt like worldbuilding all over my face. The worlbuilding is well thought, well explained and, as I said, very interesting but as a reader I need more. If you intend to publish it, I would suggest to focus on the character. Therefore, the ending would be more powerful.
I'll alos add some of the discussion I had with Orbiting Kettle about pacing. The back and forth between two characters is now something well established in writing, while not so along ago, it was usal to see a story divided in two parts, one for a character (or several) and the other part for the other character(s).
I always thought the latter easier to write and to read but the former, if done correctly, speed up the pace and caught the reader more easily (which is the case here).
Aside from that, this story falls short for characters development, especially Daring Do. We don't actually follow the character who have the largest palette of emotions (the human) and we follow the one whose emotions are barely described (Daring Do). So I wasn't really caught by the story.
It felt like worldbuilding all over my face. The worlbuilding is well thought, well explained and, as I said, very interesting but as a reader I need more. If you intend to publish it, I would suggest to focus on the character. Therefore, the ending would be more powerful.
I'll alos add some of the discussion I had with Orbiting Kettle about pacing. The back and forth between two characters is now something well established in writing, while not so along ago, it was usal to see a story divided in two parts, one for a character (or several) and the other part for the other character(s).
I always thought the latter easier to write and to read but the former, if done correctly, speed up the pace and caught the reader more easily (which is the case here).
I liked the concept of this story.
Fantastic worldbuilding, and all the details make sense and add authenticity to the feelings.
Fantastic worldbuilding, and all the details make sense and add authenticity to the feelings.
I had trouble with this one. I’ll admit, however, that I’m not normally an HiE reader, so some of my bias may be slipping in. First, the main narrative didn’t feel like Daring Do at all. I was constantly being tripped up by strange analogies and word choices (“Be a worm in a can of rocks” for example). Daring Do didn’t have much in the way of… reaction? She didn’t feel authentic. Also? The final line just felt wrong. Daring Do would fight. She would try something. Do something. Not just do the helpless princess thing.
Second, the “logs” didn’t come across as something any sort of explorer/colonist would write. It’s too casual, even if they’re supposed to be personal logs. This issue with a falling out between Jennifer and Bruce? “She’s really shotgunning round, so you’d better hit the deck, hunch down and ride it out.” Who is this even written to? Who’s “you” in this? Then there are comments like “It passed like a dream” while the same entry ends with “I have a bad feeling about this?” I have no idea who the narrator is. What he (?) wants. Why is he there? I don’t even know what he does for the colony.
Then there’s continuity. We have an explosion that happened for no discernible reason. A magical screen that protected some of the population from the explosion. An attack without any reason I can see.
I think this needs a lot more detail and a lot more planning as to what happened during the colony period. The diary entries need to be tightened significantly. Characters need to be developed more effectively.
It's an interesting idea, but the concept needs to be explored more coherently.
Second, the “logs” didn’t come across as something any sort of explorer/colonist would write. It’s too casual, even if they’re supposed to be personal logs. This issue with a falling out between Jennifer and Bruce? “She’s really shotgunning round, so you’d better hit the deck, hunch down and ride it out.” Who is this even written to? Who’s “you” in this? Then there are comments like “It passed like a dream” while the same entry ends with “I have a bad feeling about this?” I have no idea who the narrator is. What he (?) wants. Why is he there? I don’t even know what he does for the colony.
Then there’s continuity. We have an explosion that happened for no discernible reason. A magical screen that protected some of the population from the explosion. An attack without any reason I can see.
I think this needs a lot more detail and a lot more planning as to what happened during the colony period. The diary entries need to be tightened significantly. Characters need to be developed more effectively.
It's an interesting idea, but the concept needs to be explored more coherently.
Genre: Human In Equestria to the nth degree
Thoughts: I was completely sucked in by the journies of the human and Daring Do. The story maintains a slow burn that only starts to accelerate right toward the end, and I didn't want to put it down because I wanted to know what happened next.
The ending is, therefore, my biggest sticking point. After all the build up of the characters and the slow unraveling of mystery, we end with a slasher horror moment of sorts? I don't buy it. I actually do like the horror aspect of it, and I think that could be a fitting way to approach the meeting of the two storylines. But I think it isn't currently sticking the landing by having our all-action protagonist suddenly freeze up. The payoff is also severely blunted (no pun intended) by having the meeting of these two characters who we've come to care about end in just a blaze (420) of smoke (em if you got em). Right now the ending just smacks us in the face, which is a sharp disappointment after such a well crafted slow journey.
I also think it's way too convenient that the human picks just that moment to wake up. Like I get it that Daring Do must have woken him up on accident when she was messing with the console, but I think there's room to give us as readers some clues about what effect her actions are having, even if she as a citizen of a lower-tech world doesn't share that understanding. That could even help build more anticipation and a stronger sense of horror, because we would know both that trouble's brewing and that she doesn't see it coming. But once the dude is in the room, I want to see Action Horse take action.
I hate ranking this low because I think it's a fantastic and engrossing start (or maybe more like 2/3rds) of a story that I could really see enjoying. But right now it doesn't feel complete to me, and I feel like some of the best bits of its payoff still have yet to be presented. Without those, it's ultimately hard to judge the full meaning and impact of the story, even though a lot of good stuff is on offer.
Keep going, Author.
Tier: Needs Work
Thoughts: I was completely sucked in by the journies of the human and Daring Do. The story maintains a slow burn that only starts to accelerate right toward the end, and I didn't want to put it down because I wanted to know what happened next.
The ending is, therefore, my biggest sticking point. After all the build up of the characters and the slow unraveling of mystery, we end with a slasher horror moment of sorts? I don't buy it. I actually do like the horror aspect of it, and I think that could be a fitting way to approach the meeting of the two storylines. But I think it isn't currently sticking the landing by having our all-action protagonist suddenly freeze up. The payoff is also severely blunted (no pun intended) by having the meeting of these two characters who we've come to care about end in just a blaze (420) of smoke (em if you got em). Right now the ending just smacks us in the face, which is a sharp disappointment after such a well crafted slow journey.
I also think it's way too convenient that the human picks just that moment to wake up. Like I get it that Daring Do must have woken him up on accident when she was messing with the console, but I think there's room to give us as readers some clues about what effect her actions are having, even if she as a citizen of a lower-tech world doesn't share that understanding. That could even help build more anticipation and a stronger sense of horror, because we would know both that trouble's brewing and that she doesn't see it coming. But once the dude is in the room, I want to see Action Horse take action.
I hate ranking this low because I think it's a fantastic and engrossing start (or maybe more like 2/3rds) of a story that I could really see enjoying. But right now it doesn't feel complete to me, and I feel like some of the best bits of its payoff still have yet to be presented. Without those, it's ultimately hard to judge the full meaning and impact of the story, even though a lot of good stuff is on offer.
Keep going, Author.
Tier: Needs Work
This fic reminds me very well of the entire series of Planet of the Apes, which was undoubtedly the real inspirator behind this story.
Between the two films, Planet of the Apes (1968) and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), a very distinct tonal shift was seen between the two films. In the 1968 film, the story focused well around the events and troubles that the humans, the minorities, were engaged in. They were the ones being suppressed, the ones facing the hardship, and because of it, we as the audience encourage the lonely humans to break free from their ape captors and find some kind of safety within the barely habitable planet that was.
However, with the reboot, the directors and writers didn't understand this very distinct tone throughout the film. In the 2011 film, the chimps are the minorities, but the huge difference is that their supression isn't show. They're different, yes, which is what allows people to see them as different, but that to the audience isn't a valid enough reason for them to support the apes to rise. In the film, the apes are still seen as the supressors, the ones who want to destroy human civilization through violence and death because they seem it as unfit from their selfish view of how the world should be possessed. The reboot ran with the bad guys and gut punched anyone who thought that they were in fact the worst faction to join. Justice, wisdom, and reason lost to what was hate. This is why, at least, my friends and I hate the reboot while adore the 1968 film.
But when I look back at this fic, there isn't either. There's nothing to root for, there's nothing to put your motivation behind other than the fact that it's exploration for the pure reason of exploration. Sure, you can say that the moral of the story could be "don't screw with things that you shouldn't", but that's a pretty lackluster and uninteresting moral to soely stage your entire story on. The reason why I went so indepth with studying these two films is because they show how a story like this could be done well, or at least better. Sure, expecting a Writeoff short story to be on par with a movie with millions of dollars in budget put behind it sure is a high demand, but it doesn't remove the fact that both of the movies do more justice onto the story than this fic, where someone's just "screwed in the head just because". Also, a lot of stories I read on Writeoff do, in fact, have better plots than some movies I've watched.
The story could be reformatted to give the reader more of a reason to push forward with what the story has to say, but overall with what's given now, it's enough for me to move at least to the middle of the road from the beginning. Sure, there are plenty of routes for the story to have taken to develop more interest and immersion, but this is just one of them.
Between the two films, Planet of the Apes (1968) and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), a very distinct tonal shift was seen between the two films. In the 1968 film, the story focused well around the events and troubles that the humans, the minorities, were engaged in. They were the ones being suppressed, the ones facing the hardship, and because of it, we as the audience encourage the lonely humans to break free from their ape captors and find some kind of safety within the barely habitable planet that was.
However, with the reboot, the directors and writers didn't understand this very distinct tone throughout the film. In the 2011 film, the chimps are the minorities, but the huge difference is that their supression isn't show. They're different, yes, which is what allows people to see them as different, but that to the audience isn't a valid enough reason for them to support the apes to rise. In the film, the apes are still seen as the supressors, the ones who want to destroy human civilization through violence and death because they seem it as unfit from their selfish view of how the world should be possessed. The reboot ran with the bad guys and gut punched anyone who thought that they were in fact the worst faction to join. Justice, wisdom, and reason lost to what was hate. This is why, at least, my friends and I hate the reboot while adore the 1968 film.
But when I look back at this fic, there isn't either. There's nothing to root for, there's nothing to put your motivation behind other than the fact that it's exploration for the pure reason of exploration. Sure, you can say that the moral of the story could be "don't screw with things that you shouldn't", but that's a pretty lackluster and uninteresting moral to soely stage your entire story on. The reason why I went so indepth with studying these two films is because they show how a story like this could be done well, or at least better. Sure, expecting a Writeoff short story to be on par with a movie with millions of dollars in budget put behind it sure is a high demand, but it doesn't remove the fact that both of the movies do more justice onto the story than this fic, where someone's just "screwed in the head just because". Also, a lot of stories I read on Writeoff do, in fact, have better plots than some movies I've watched.
The story could be reformatted to give the reader more of a reason to push forward with what the story has to say, but overall with what's given now, it's enough for me to move at least to the middle of the road from the beginning. Sure, there are plenty of routes for the story to have taken to develop more interest and immersion, but this is just one of them.
A quality entry in the round, I'd say. Daring Do risking life in Tartarus to solve a mystery, some hype world building, crazy scientists doin' crazy things. I really dig the implication that magic is (roughly) metabolized nuclear energy. The split structure was a good choice. I saw the big connection coming (it's kind of impossible not to), but I didn't see the mad science coming.
I'm curious to see Celestia and Luna's growth arc after the incident.
>>Kritten
I wouldn't say there's no reason to root for the ponies. They may be primitive, but they seem to recognize that they've been toyed with and presumably aren't happy about it. Also, for all they know, the reactor meltdown was a (botched) attempt to kill them. It seemed to vaporize everything else quite well. Obviously, modern ponies would try to talk out the issues, but we're dealing with Neander-equines, by the feel of it.
I'm curious to see Celestia and Luna's growth arc after the incident.
>>Kritten
I wouldn't say there's no reason to root for the ponies. They may be primitive, but they seem to recognize that they've been toyed with and presumably aren't happy about it. Also, for all they know, the reactor meltdown was a (botched) attempt to kill them. It seemed to vaporize everything else quite well. Obviously, modern ponies would try to talk out the issues, but we're dealing with Neander-equines, by the feel of it.
>>Rao
Them figuring out that they were toyed with when it came to their genes is a what-if scenario. Which isn't in the story since they aren't capable of voicing their distaste with the perspective being from a human. Same with the "attempt" to kill them via your assumed botched attempt. There is absolutely no reason given by the story why they attacked. It's the same as an effort for war without any politics put behind it. Unless I missed something, I now think that the story was a bit rushed because of the fact that it's a war without politics.
Them figuring out that they were toyed with when it came to their genes is a what-if scenario. Which isn't in the story since they aren't capable of voicing their distaste with the perspective being from a human. Same with the "attempt" to kill them via your assumed botched attempt. There is absolutely no reason given by the story why they attacked. It's the same as an effort for war without any politics put behind it. Unless I missed something, I now think that the story was a bit rushed because of the fact that it's a war without politics.
This is great, though, it could use some cleaning up before anything else gets done with it. You know, look over word choice, make some tweaks to phrasing, replace commas with periods and vice-versa, change the narrative at times... the works.
Slow-burning mystery that burns a little too slowly at times (when Daring Do notes how bored she is while traveling, that's when I started to lose interest). However, the apocalypse log entries more than made up for it, and once 'Do made it to the ruins of the colony, the story grabbed and never lost me.
...That's not to say it doesn't have flaws. Besides the sometimes awkward prose and writing, the pony revolution happens with no build-up or fanfare, and the ending is the most obnoxious kind of cliffhanger: the kind that doesn't make any sense. Going by her narration, Daring Do has no idea what the object that the anonymous human is pointing at her is. Logically, her response to it shouldn't be cold terror, but confusion. It would make more sense for her final words to be "what the hell is that thing?" or something along those lines.
That she greets her end with fear, and dies like a complete chump, runs contrary to her enterprising character, too.
...That's not to say it doesn't have flaws. Besides the sometimes awkward prose and writing, the pony revolution happens with no build-up or fanfare, and the ending is the most obnoxious kind of cliffhanger: the kind that doesn't make any sense. Going by her narration, Daring Do has no idea what the object that the anonymous human is pointing at her is. Logically, her response to it shouldn't be cold terror, but confusion. It would make more sense for her final words to be "what the hell is that thing?" or something along those lines.
That she greets her end with fear, and dies like a complete chump, runs contrary to her enterprising character, too.
Post by
Monokeras
, deleted
Good luck to all finalists!
>>Fenton
>>bloons3
>>Novel_Idea
>>Rao
>>Kritten
>>CoffeeMinion
>>Posh
Thanks every buddy for your comments.
I completely ran out of time with this one. Really I wrote the last line at 12:02 GMT, encroaching on the five minute extra grace period given to us by Roger. Then I had two minutes to catch a couple of typos and here we go. So no wonder the end is not satisfactory. I really couldn’t’ve written a more detailed scene, and I had to conclude. And I had zero time to edit (which is only a half-truth, since I partly edited the first third last Sunday).
I had this idea for the Most Most Dangerous Game and it was originally published under the name Urheimat. It was structured differently, featuring Lyra instead of Daring Do (I think the end would’ve worked better if I had stuck to my guns and used Lyra, but then the context would’ve been harder to set). Present Perfect had smashed it, especially because of the English, so I nuked the fic completely, and kept the idea “for another time when I would’ve improved”. Well, the English has slightly improved, but not enough it seems to pass muster. This version will follow the first one into the bin and I’m disowning the idea for good; if anyone wants to take a crack at it, be my guest.
Also, no, it wasn’t inspired by the recent movie Planet of the Apes that I never watched, though someone mentioned it before when I wrote the first version. All I’ve read is the original book by French author Pierre Boulle (a classic of French SciFi) and the first film with Elton.
Once again, I feel bad I gave you something enjoyable for like 75% and then betrayed your hopes at the end. I hope you won’t hold a grudge against me. I apologise and really, for those who know me, that doesn’t buck the trend: there’s always something I botch badly and the whole fic fails miserably.
See you next round with better hopes. At least, with minifics, I’m a bit more successful.
And since Saint Exupéry seems to be all the rage, let me finished on this: “Future successes grow over the ashes of former defeats.”
>>Fenton
>>bloons3
>>Novel_Idea
>>Rao
>>Kritten
>>CoffeeMinion
>>Posh
Thanks every buddy for your comments.
I completely ran out of time with this one. Really I wrote the last line at 12:02 GMT, encroaching on the five minute extra grace period given to us by Roger. Then I had two minutes to catch a couple of typos and here we go. So no wonder the end is not satisfactory. I really couldn’t’ve written a more detailed scene, and I had to conclude. And I had zero time to edit (which is only a half-truth, since I partly edited the first third last Sunday).
I had this idea for the Most Most Dangerous Game and it was originally published under the name Urheimat. It was structured differently, featuring Lyra instead of Daring Do (I think the end would’ve worked better if I had stuck to my guns and used Lyra, but then the context would’ve been harder to set). Present Perfect had smashed it, especially because of the English, so I nuked the fic completely, and kept the idea “for another time when I would’ve improved”. Well, the English has slightly improved, but not enough it seems to pass muster. This version will follow the first one into the bin and I’m disowning the idea for good; if anyone wants to take a crack at it, be my guest.
Also, no, it wasn’t inspired by the recent movie Planet of the Apes that I never watched, though someone mentioned it before when I wrote the first version. All I’ve read is the original book by French author Pierre Boulle (a classic of French SciFi) and the first film with Elton.
Once again, I feel bad I gave you something enjoyable for like 75% and then betrayed your hopes at the end. I hope you won’t hold a grudge against me. I apologise and really, for those who know me, that doesn’t buck the trend: there’s always something I botch badly and the whole fic fails miserably.
See you next round with better hopes. At least, with minifics, I’m a bit more successful.
And since Saint Exupéry seems to be all the rage, let me finished on this: “Future successes grow over the ashes of former defeats.”
>>Monokeras
Go ahead and watch the original Planet of the Apes. I really recommend it. Seriously.
And let us both have good luck next time.
Go ahead and watch the original Planet of the Apes. I really recommend it. Seriously.
And let us both have good luck next time.
>>Monokeras
I sincerely hope that you continue this. I want to read a proper conclusion for the journey this took me on. I think Daring Do is a fine choice. All we really need now is what happens after their meeting. :heart:
>>Monokeras
It's Heston. Heston, I say!
I sincerely hope that you continue this. I want to read a proper conclusion for the journey this took me on. I think Daring Do is a fine choice. All we really need now is what happens after their meeting. :heart:
>>Monokeras
It's Heston. Heston, I say!
>>CoffeeMinion
Thanks for Helston.
As for the story, no dice. Like about all my WriteOff “pieces”, it’s disposable, throwaway material (shit).
But don’t worry, you have plenty of better stories to read and you’ll have forgotten about mine in a couple of days, hopefully! :) 💜 too!
Thanks for Helston.
As for the story, no dice. Like about all my WriteOff “pieces”, it’s disposable, throwaway material (shit).
But don’t worry, you have plenty of better stories to read and you’ll have forgotten about mine in a couple of days, hopefully! :) 💜 too!